Tucson, Part II

Today was my second flight to Tucson (to make up for my first flight to Tucson), and I had a back seat passenger this time. Selena (the girl with the photos from my last post) rode along with us, since we used her flight time in addition to my flight time. Unfortunately for Selena, Erin's comm box wasn't working properly, so Selena's headset didn't work. Apart from that, I'm very glad to say that this trip went much better than the last one. I got to talk to ATC and make my own landings. And, amazingly, my landings (we did a couple touch-and-go's) were pretty smooth. A problem student pilots sometimes have is flaring too high on wide runways, which causes them to drop down pretty hard on the landing gear. The reason is that we subconsciously memorize our perspective on roundout and defer to that perspective any time we land. Obviously, if we're landing on a wider-than-normal runway, it's going to seem like we're lower than we actually are, causing a premature roundout. Today, though, I really concentrated and managed to make 3 decent landings.

The trip back to Cochise from Tucson was really smooth. In fact, Selena fell asleep for a while. I remember someone once saying to me that one of the best compliments you can get on your flying is to have a passenger fall asleep. Mission accomplished, I guess.

Tomorrow, I'll probably find out which day I'll be flying my cross-country stage check. I've still got pretty good odds of finishing my private before the semester ends. Please, God, enable me to finish my private before the semester ends.